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Salad

Summer Salad

A salad of lettuce, radishes, cucumber, mustard greens, cress, and French dressing, garnished with hard‑boiled egg slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Summer Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If the ingredients are not very fresh, soak them in cold water for 1-2 hours.

  2. Drain the ingredients carefully using a cloth.

  3. Cut the lettuce into small pieces and slice the radishes and cucumber thinly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the lettuce, radishes, and cucumber in a salad bowl, topping with mustard greens and cress.

  2. Garnish with slices of hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Add the French salad dressing just before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Radish + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Radish + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Forms the crisp, leafy base of the salad and gives its main body.
Radishes
Add a crisp texture and a sharp, peppery bite.
Cucumber
Adds cool, moist crunch and a mild fresh flavour.
Mustard greens
Add a sharp, pungent bite that contrasts with the milder lettuce.

The step that matters

Add the French salad dressing just before serving. Salt and acid in dressing draw water out of leafy greens and cucumber, so adding it early makes the salad limp and watery. Dressing at the last moment keeps the leaves crisp.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, cucumber, mustard):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, cucumber, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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